Trojan WS-3000

[Model L]

More news.

I was able to borrow a bench power supply in addition to the oscilloscope, both from my school. using these pieces of equipment, I was able to verify that the encoder board functions properly, which means the issue likely lies within the control box. not what I wanted, as it means I have to debug that while its connected to 24v power. of course, it could also be a high resistance connection somewhere, as in between the rotator encoder board and the controls there are not 1, not 2, but 4 different connections. 2 of them are plastic plugs, then the soldering connections we did to rejoin the rotator wire, and finally the plug where it connects to the rotator controller. I plan to use an ohmmeter to see if any of these connections have a high resistance or otherwise bad connection.
I also was able to hook the tone generator up to the power supply, and I found the pitch adjustment for alert. interestingly, there is also an adjustment for how much alert warbles. very cool.

does the tone generator board use 4046 phase-locked loop ICs? i have used them to build variable warble, pitch ,and volume circuits.

here, take a look at some pictures of the board.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing
see if you can decipher its workings lol.

[carolinasignalco]

thanks^^^^^^

[Model L]

I can report that we have successfully played music through the siren! Evan fabricated a cable with an in-line switch to toggle the drivers on and off, and we were able to play music off of our phones. A video of this will be posted soon. Additionally, we mounted the head onto the rotator during this, and Evan was able to stand in the siren as it rotated.


once again, a video of these shenanigans will be posted soon.

[SirensOfAustralia]

I can report that we have successfully played music through the siren! Evan fabricated a cable with an in-line switch to toggle the drivers on and off, and we were able to play music off of our phones. A video of this will be posted soon. Additionally, we mounted the head onto the rotator during this, and Evan was able to stand in the siren as it rotated.


once again, a video of these shenanigans will be posted soon.

Nice! sounded like fun, cant wait to see the video.

[Model L]

well, here's one of the videos. I need to edit the others into a bit of a longer video, I don't want to upload them all individually.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c15l2b5Zyac

[Model L]

And here's another video: https://youtu.be/9p5cMHgv2EA

In the next week or so I'm probably going to make a lot of progress on this siren. I'm off school starting next week so have a lot of time to do stuff. Stay tuned!

[Model L]

Indeed, progress was made! I finished splicing back together the speaker driver cable (soldered all 34 individual wires back together... took 3 hours lmao) and on new years eve, Evan came over and we hooked up 8 drivers to the siren. In doing so, we tested not only the first two amplifiers entirely (they both work fine) but we also tested 9 drivers. You're probably asking why 9, and of course that's because we encountered a bad driver! we tried out SI-TEST once we hooked all of the drivers up, and one of the lights on amplifier 2 was not lighting. the one in question? driver number 6. After making sure we connected the wires properly, we checked continuity across the drivers terminals... The result of course, was a fully open circuit. I'm not entirely sure what failed on this driver, but I do want to either fix or replace it. (if anyone has spare atlas SD-600 drivers let me know! I want to buy a few so I've got spares.) Anyways, after we had figured that out, we hooked one of the other drivers up (number 12) and gladly, it was fine. We decided to first test it with the cable we fabricated, and so of course, out came the laptop, and up popped a YouTube window with rick Astley ready to play. (Video coming sometime soon). And after that, we decided we had to try out one of the signals, and so airhorn it was. We wanted a signal that was short of course, as if it was too loud (foreshadowing) we wanted to be able to cut it off fast. I had Evan go down to the opposite side of my street where a Cul-de-sac is, and once I verified he was recording, I momentarily pressed the button. What happened next was nothing short of excessive. And this was only 8 drivers! I could feel it in my chest behind the siren, and of course, Evan received the full force of it. Now of course, we know this is way too loud to be running it like this in my neighborhood so any further testing with more than 1 driver will likely be limited to when we mount this siren to a trailer hopefully this summer.
Now, for some other news. I re-read one of the manuals I have for this siren, and realized it has schematics and test procedures outlined for verifying proper operation of the rotator control boards! This could be the stuff I need to repair/fix mine, as they don't operate as intended. As of today I have brought the rotator inside and will be disassembling it nearly entirely to properly clean and lubricate it (for the first time in 38 years, and 27 since the siren last ran when installed). I will also be installing the new rotator motor I purchased to replace the current one which I repaired hastily in order to get it operational since I don't trust that my repair will hold. Hopefully once these things are done, my siren will be able to increment its position properly once more.


Once again, stay tuned! Progress is slow due to school and other obligations but the next few weeks should be quite interesting!

[Model L]

Alright, it's been a while so I figured I'd post a small update.

with the end of the school semester in a week and FRC competition season in full swing, this project has been shoved to the back burner for the time being. A few weeks ago I took the rotator inside and was able to connect it to the controller, but my power supply does not supply enough amperage to properly test it. I was able to confirm once more that the optical assembly works however. It is also still too cold and wet to paint the siren, and will be for a few more months. Hopefully in march or april I'll be able to resume working on getting the siren painted and maybe even mounted to a trailer.

I was also able to confirm with Whelen that they still stock the 100w driver replacement kits, so a full power blast is still possible, I'd just need to order the kit. That will likely be after everything else, as I don't have a lot of income in order to purchase stuff for this project.